Playing sounds with C++?

Question

How would i make it so in my program there is a button when that button is clicked i want it to play a .wma file without opening and media player?

Answer 1

The C++ standard does not include this functionality. That means it depends on what your system offers.

For Windows, you can try something like PlaySound.

However, you best bet is to use a pre-existing library, like:

• OpenAL
• BASS
• FMOD
• SDL's: Sound.

Searching for C++ Sound Library brings up a lot of information.

Also, check out these three other SO topics:

• What Is The Best C++ Sound API For Windows?
• How to play MP3 files in C?
• Learning to work with audio in C++

Answer 2

Although the above answer mentions it (and everything else, it doesn't give any recommendations so...), FMOD is the king of C++ sound (the most used) and works great so I'd recommend FMOD in particular.

Answer 3

Gstreamer is a free, cross-platform multimedia framework written in C (using GObject) that allows encoding/decoding for many types of media, including wma. Very easy to use and well documented.

Answer 4

KDE's Phonon is a cross-platform(!) C++ multimedia library. It supports native sound systems as backends. Worth a look if you haven't seen it before, and a simple video player can be written in a mere 83 lines of code.

Answer 5

For Windows, in all honesty your best bet is DirectShow. The RenderFile API allows you to play most audio file types with just a few lines of code.

The best part about DirectShow is that it's a part of the Windows platform so you don't need to bundle an external component.